Cosmic Mystery Tour

Humankind has wondered about the origin of the universe throughout
recorded history, and no doubt before. Before the invention of the telescope,
we believed our solar system (the sun, the earth and other planets) comprised
the entire universe. The stars were believed to be small holes in a heavenly
sphere behind which burned the fires of creation.

As astronomers probed deeper into space with powerful telescopes, they
realized the universe is vastly larger than our solar system. We now know
that
the edge of the visible universe is roughly ten trillion (10,000,000,000,000)
times as distant as Neptune, currently the outermost planet in our solar system.

Cosmology is the field of science that studies the universe as a
whole--its entire history and all that it contains.